Musings of a Twisted Mind|Here you will find thoughts on current events, sports, politics, court system, theology, and other things.

You used to be the spokesman for Crossgen Comics. Remember that? Now instead of working on such a crummy comic as Thunderbolts, how about remembering those Crossgen characters. With the most important setting being Sojourn.

Now as the former spokesman for these comics and now that Disney owns Marvel and Disney owns Crossgen, why don’t you walk into the Editor in Chief’s office at Marvel and do your spiel on why Marvel should get the Crossgen characters out of the Disney vault where they sit in limbo and actually put them to work.

Or were you just lying for all that time at Crossgen?

Back at the end of November, there was the message posted at Badger Comics that their subscriptions were ending. This was without warning and they made people pay deposits for comics two months in advance.

Effective immediately Badger Subscriptions is closed. We appreciate you the customers and the business you have given us over the years but unfortunately it has become impossible to keep the service going. It has been a difficult decision but instead of things getting better over the past few months they have continued to decline making the choice quite plain.

Orders for November will be finished/shipped by Wednesday Dec 2nd. All unfilled items that have not yet been received will have their deposits calculated and refunded fully within the next 7-10 business days. Any orders/items that have been received and have not been able to be billed are still subject to the terms of the service and are only eligible to have their deposits refunded as store credit. All other deposits will be refunded to the original payment method. Thank you.

Well that stunk. I had just started using them for about four months. Well its now January 24 and I still never got that shipment that was supposed to ship on the 2nd of December. And I also have never received a refund for the deposits by my last statement received on January 7.

My inquiries have gone unanswered.

I just saw that Kevin Conroy will be voicing Batman again. This is great news

Adapted from the Superman/Batman story of the same name by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness, the feature is scheduled for release this fall and reunites Kevin Conroy as Batman, Tim Daly as Superman, and Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor

According to Lying in the Gutters, Boom Comics is getting the license to produce the classic Disney characters to go along with their already established Mummets and Pixar comics.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Boom was handed the license to produce new material for Crossgen while they were at it? Sojourn deserves to live again. Come on Mark Waid you know you want to show Mark Alessi what would have happened if he had listeend to you instead of being a fool that ran the company into the ground.

I find it humorous to look at the numbers in the Comic Book Industry for April. What sold. How much and who has the hold on the market. Then compare it with my order for April comics

So according to Comic Book Resources here are the numbers:

TOP COMICS BREAKDOWN

Publisher	NI	RI	TI	Min Price	Max Price	Avg Price	Total Reported Units	Total Reported Dollars	Percent of Top Comics By Units	Percent of Top Comics By Dollars
Marvel Comics	100	11	111	$2.99	$10.00	$3.63	3,416,109	$11,850,433.88	50.74%	52.27%
DC Comics	84	5	89	$1.00	$4.99	$3.01	2,275,507	$7,154,329.05	33.80%	31.55%
IDW Publishing	22	22	$3.99	$3.99	$3.99	270,103	$1,077,710.97	4.01%	4.75%
Dark Horse	10	10	$2.99	$3.50	$3.09	187,416	$565,556.97	2.78%	2.49%
Image Comics	17	17	$2.95	$4.99	$3.31	159,357	$509,523.98	2.37%	2.25%
Dynamite Entertainment	16	16	$2.99	$3.99	$3.53	149,687	$514,066.72	2.22%	2.27%
Boom Studios	7	7	$2.99	$3.99	$3.70	57,609	$216,347.91	0.86%	0.95%
Avatar	5	5	$3.99	$3.99	$3.99	48,957	$195,338.43	0.73%	0.86%
Zenescope Entertainment	6	6	$2.99	$5.99	$3.82	40,326	$153,531.74	0.60%	0.68%
Bluewater Productions	3	3	$3.99	$3.99	$3.99	35,025	$139,749.75	0.52%	0.62%
Archie Comics	2	2	$2.50	$2.50	$2.50	14,006	$35,015.00	0.21%	0.15%
Bongo Comics	2	2	$2.99	$2.99	$2.99	13,322	$39,832.78	0.20%	0.18%
Aspen	2	2	$1.99	$2.99	$2.49	12,881	$32,121.19	0.19%	0.14%
Abstract Studios	1	1	$3.50	$3.50	$3.50	11,291	$39,518.50	0.17%	0.17%
Cartoon Books	1	1	$3.50	$3.50	$3.50	10,001	$35,003.50	0.15%	0.15%
Udon Entertainment	1	1	$3.95	$3.95	$3.95	8,977	$35,459.15	0.13%	0.16%
Devil’s Due Publishing	1	1	$3.50	$3.50	$3.50	5,393	$18,875.50	0.08%	0.08%
Dabel Brothers Productions	1	1	$3.99	$3.99	$3.99	4,244	$16,933.56	0.06%	0.07%
Aardvark-Vanaheim	1	1	$3.00	$3.00	$3.00	4,066	$12,198.00	0.06%	0.05%
Kenzer and Company	1	1	$4.99	$4.99	$4.99	4,010	$20,009.90	0.06%	0.09%
Radical Comics	1	1	$2.99	$2.99	$2.99	3,762	$11,248.38	0.06%	0.05%

Now let’s look at what I bought:

5 DCs

1 Image

1 Marvel

2 Dynamite Entertainment

1 Radical

1 Zenoscobe or something like that. I never bought anything from them before but Salem’s Daughter looked interesting.

In May, I ordered about the same

5 DCs

1 Image

2 Marvels

2 Dynamite

1 Dabel Brothers

1 Radical

1 Zenoscobe

As you can see I’m a big spender when it comes to comic books. There was a time that I was buying 30 titles a month.

And I do subscribe directly to Amazing Spider-man. So that’s one more Marvel.

Last month it was reported that Devils Due would be bringing the canceled television series to comic book. I can’t help but wonder if it will ever happen given that Devils Due has been late with payments to other creators. Has canceled solicited titles such as World of Dungeons and Dragons.

I hope it happens since I liked the show. And thought CBS was boneheaded. Just like they were canceling Moonlight the next year. But I have my doubts about Devils Due.

I have collected comics since I was 4 years old (1977 for those that don’t know). As such I will check comic book sites. One of them is newsarama which for years was run on the the good messageboard software vbulletin. Well newsarama was bought by a company and last summer they switched to Pluck forums. The result is less traffic, less users, and those that remained are angry, complaining ect… I stopped going there until recently and saw that people were still angry about it. As looking at this forum will tell you

So I got to thinking, is it just comic book fans that are this mad? So I decided to check LiveScience.com and lo and behold, more Pluck hatred and still more.

They don’t have forums on their other Pluck linked sites. Wonder why?

So how does Pluck survive? Confideniality agreements for one. Promising upgrades that are always pushed back is another.

In my opinion the best forum software is the free phpbb and another free one that looks good is smf. But if you really want to pay, it should be vbulletin. Pluck should be paying its customers to use it.

A few years ago I was into Crossgen’s line of comics. Sojourn was my favorite comic to hit the stands by a large amount. It was a fantasy comic that was similar to Dungeons and Dragons world. They also had many other interesting comics like Mystic, Scion, Ruse, Route 666, Brath, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It was probably the only time that I was into nearly an entire line of comics.

Well like most comic companies that try something other than superhero nonsense, Crossgen went bankrupt back in 2004. There was a bankruptcy auction with one person bidding that would have tried to keep the comics going. The winning bidder however was Disney. They wanted the rights to the series Abadazad. And they weren’t the least bit interested in the rest of the line but they had to buy it all. So they came in and threw down a million dollars and that was the end of the auction.

What came out of it? Two books. Which were released in July 2006 I believe. They just got around to telling J.M. DeMatteis that they won’t be publishing anymore. And the third book was released in England but don’t count on seeing it in the U.S.

So they swoop in and hold a bunch of characters hostage and don’t do anything with the property that they just had to have.

Just got to love corporations.

My Appeal: Let Dynamite Entertainment have Sojourn!

And I wouldn’t mind if they were given the other titles I mentioned too.

Well as I wrote in the previous entries, Comic Book Review was having some database difficulties. We ended up having to set up a whole new forum and lost all the posts and users. So if you aren’t a regular visitor, you’ll need to re-register when you come back.

It took a while but you can now see screenshots and features of Comic Book Millennium at http://www.beavervalleysoftware.com/product.aspx?product=Comic+Book+Millennium

Comic Book Review will stay online tonight. We’ve been having lots of trouble with the database. One of the weird errors was the accented letters were getting changed into garbage so that Nestl’e was Nestl@#@. And sometimes the posts don’t format right. Headaches for Jas. Hopefully we won’t have to do what he thinks we’re going to have to do. :/

So I look at my journal user information and see people that I have no idea who they are listing me as a friend. I don’t know if that’s cool or weird. I checked and they’re friends with other friends so I added them. So if I added you today and you don’t use your known user id or known name anywhere in your journal… maybe you could tell me who you are. LOL

I have added to my rping characters and now my main character has been taken out of mothballs for the first time since early 2004. Baron Banter has returned. He’s rping with a certain clone that has a history of getting on his nerves. None other than his brother that he’d prefer not to recognize as his brother: Qwaring’s Clone#1. Also the mysterious The Seer has returned as well. He’s the one that freed Baron Banter from the prison with a lockpick.